The IRE office will be closed from December 25th to January 5th.
Blog
Lightning Talks are back for CAR 2014 in Baltimore! Got an idea for a talk? Submit it here: http://ire.aronpilhofer.com/ Lightning Talks are 5-minute presentations on topics wide and varied. If you’d like to submit a talk, please use the form linked above. We ask that only folks who are attending NICAR vote on the submissions, and we’ll hear…
Read MoreIf a judge agrees with a court fact-finder, Gannett New Jersey could be getting $542,000 in legal fees stemming from a public records lawsuit. Gannett filed suit in 2009 after several newspapers asked for municipal payroll records in an electronic format, not PDFs. In August 2012 the company won the “precedent-setting case.” As for the…
Read MoreWhen I was a reporter at a daily newspaper in Virginia, few things frustrated me more than slow responses to Freedom of Information Act requests. I’d put in my request and wait the allotted response time only to receive a handful of excuses. Sometimes, after weeks of nagging, I’d get the documents. Other times my…
Read MoreLess than two dozen of Virginia’s roughly 300 law enforcement agencies filed a required drug destruction report to the state’s Board of Pharmacy in 2012, according to a report by Richmond, Va. television station WRIC. “Since the ABC 8 News investigation first aired in February 2013, the number of law enforcement agencies complying with the…
Read MoreOf the 18 deaths in law enforcement custody from 2008 through 2012 in Milwaukee County, 12 were classified as suicide or natural. Officials at every level have used those rulings to absolve themselves of responsibility for prisoners’ deaths, a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel investigation found. In many cases, officials did not evaluate all of the circumstances…
Read MoreA Navy jury last month found that a master diver failed to make sure proper safety procedures were followed during a training exercise that left two men dead. The Pilot pieced together an account of the dive using court testimony, documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and interviews with unit members, witnesses and…
Read MoreThe experiences of the three Capitol Hill aides-turned-lobbyists — traced through interviews with political operatives and a review of public records — illustrate in new detail the gaping holes in rules governing Washington’s revolving door. Federal ethics rules are intended to limit lobbying by former senior officials within one year after they leave the government.…
Read MoreWisconsin officials have nearly quadrupled the number of offenders released from state custody after they were committed as sexually violent persons. The risks to residents are reasonable, officials say, because the state’s treatment programs are working and new data suggest these offenders are less likely to reoffend than previously thought. The story is the first…
Read MoreWest Virginia Department of Environmental Protection officials never reviewed two key pollution-prevention plans for the Freedom Industries tank farm before the Jan. 9 chemical leak that contaminated drinking water for 300,000 residents, according to interviews and documents obtained under the state’s public-records law.
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